Friday, January 31, 2014

(L-R)Students Tre'jor Barber, Tyler Tukes, Ivan Ortega, Marina Middle
School Assistant Principle Ginny Daws and Sofia Sanchez sit on the sea
wall at Marina Green while taking a break during their run, in San
Francisco, CA, Tuesday, January 21, 2014. In a move that has seen a
decrease of suspensions, Assistant Principle Ginny Daws has started
running with some students after class, an activity and approach that is
part of a big shift in how the district deals with defiant kids.
Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle

Like a firm rap on the knuckles with a ruler or a
backside paddling, suspending students for bad behavior is increasingly
becoming passe in public schools across California and the nation.

For
starters, it doesn't really work, educators admit. Research has
repeatedly shown suspended students are more likely to fail in school
and drop out.

And logic would hold that students temporarily
banned from school are more likely to play video games than penitently
mull over transgressions while they are away.

In San Francisco,
the school board is considering a resolution that would restrict the use
of suspension to more serious offenses, including fights or bringing
weapons, drugs or alcohol to school. Principals would no longer be
allowed to suspend for what is called willful defiance or disruption - a
catchall category that until recently accounted for about a quarter of
all suspensions in the district.

Los Angeles is among a handful
of districts that have already banned suspensions for willful defiance,
and in San Francisco some schools have voluntarily adopted the
same policy.

"We should have ways in which we can deal with a
student inside our schools without sending them home and losing
instructional time," said school board member Matt Haney,
the author of the resolution. "What I'm hearing from teachers and
principals is that they understand suspension is not an effective
intervention for defiance."

Loose definition

Part of the problem with suspending for defiance is that no one knows exactly what it means.

"Everyone has different thresholds of what is defiant," said Thomas Graven, San Francisco Unified executive director of Pupil Services. "To some people, having someone curse at you, that may be the threshold."

To
others, it might be refusing to take a hat off or texting in class
after a warning to stop. At the other extreme, a defiant student could
yell at a teacher, storm out of class, and run through the halls banging
on doors while refusing to listen to adults.

Regardless, sending a
student home might seem like an appropriate response, but it typically
doesn't address the root of the problem, Graven said.

"Willful defiance suspension should absolutely be the last resort when a kid is unsafe," Graven said.
It has been, however, a frequently used tool.

San
Francisco's 2011-12 school year had 553 suspensions for defiance out of
2,434 total suspensions. African American students received 258, or
nearly half the suspensions for defiance, though black students make up
11 percent of district enrollment.

That disproportionate suspension rate is another reason the school board is taking on the issue.

Higher risk of dropouts

For Haney, it's personal.

As a teenager, he was suspended from school for cursing at a teacher.

For
many students, just one suspension can turn a student off from school,
leading to failing grades and a higher risk of dropping out, Haney said.

"I
was given a lot of second chances, which a lot of people who do not
look like me didn't get," said Haney, who is white. "Some of my best
friends ended up in jail or worse. I feel like I saw that start
in school."

He said he wants to stop the downward spiral before it starts.

"The
students being suspended are the ones who most need our support," he
said. "Suspension can be a crutch. We feel like we've done something
when we've actually made it worse."

Over the past couple of years, San Francisco schools have significantly decreased suspensions.

Instead
of sending students home for a few days, many schools require students
to go through a restorative justice process, during which they are able
to explain their behavior and offer suggestions about how to make up
for it.

The school board resolution, which is expected to pass in
mid-February, calls for a district-wide plan to ensure every school has
the ability to address a range of student behaviors without resorting to
suspension, except when required by state law.

"The idea is to suspend nobody," Graven said. "What it doesn't mean is that we're just tolerating bad behavior."

But preventing bad behavior in the first place is a big part of the district's effort, Graven said.

Teachers
are learning new techniques to reinforce good behavior and ways to
identify early students who might need more help. That will be key to
the district's effort, said Christine Yeh, University of San Francisco professor of counseling psychology.

Underlying problems

Bad
behavior can often reflect underlying and serious issues - trauma,
family issues or community violence. Sitting in a restorative justice
circle to talk about an argument on the playground probably won't
address the real cause of the behavior, Yeh said.

Schools need
counselors, social workers and others to support students and their
families. But often there are only a few counselors for hundreds of
students - something not specifically addressed in the school
board resolution.

"That's what worries me about some of these efforts," she said.

Still,
district officials believe teacher training and a focus on the neediest
youths will make a difference not only in suspensions, but
behavior overall.

In addition, the district is shifting from a
punitive atmosphere to one that fosters relationships between the adults
and the students.

The old teacher motto "Never smile before
Christmas," which was believed to set a strict tone, for example, has
been replaced by "Smile and be nice."

Going for a walk, talk

In years past, when students behaved badly at San Francisco's Marina Middle School,
calling parents didn't help. Yelling didn't work. Lecturing was lost on
adolescent ears. And a lot of students were suspended, but that didn't
help either.

So this year Assistant Principal Ginny Daws put on tennis shoes, grabbed groups of students and took them jogging down the street.

"In
my own life, my best conversations are when I'm walking with friends,"
she said. "I realized I could build more relationships (with students)
running than by lecturing.

"If they trust me, they're going to come talk to me."

Daws,
who is in charge of school discipline, takes students maybe three miles
through the neighborhood, walking some, running some and talking a lot.

The
girls "like to talk about boy bands. What color nail polishes we all
like," she said. "They like to talk about their families."

Student Hajor Soumbati, 13, puts it another way: "We run, and we talk about the problems we have."

The payoff

The approach appears to have paid off.

So
far this school year, Marina Middle School has had eight suspensions
overall, including those for willful defiance, down from 49 last year
during the same period.

A couple of examples show why.

There was the case this year of a girl with a history of fighting who had a nasty note taped to her back by a boy.

She took the note to Daws instead of handling the situation herself.

Last year, "she would have socked him in the face," Daws said.

One suspension avoided.

And
then there were the three boys in a disagreement on the playground,
with one boy crying because the other two said he wasn't good
at basketball.

So, Daws required the three boys to teach her
basketball every day at lunch for a week. The students teamed up to
teach her to dribble and shoot.

"They didn't have an argument on the basketball court all week," she said.
Up to three more suspensions avoided.

"What
I'm finding is when they get mad, they come talk to me," she said.
"They know somebody loves them, somebody is on their side."

Thursday, January 16, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) --
San Francisco's arts school may be on the move. The school district will
vote on a plan Tuesday that could see the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts
move downtown near the opera and symphony.

There are two things working in favor for this project. The
superintendent is a huge supporter of the arts and the economy has
improved, so many believe it's now or never.

There is plenty of
talent among the youth in San Francisco. The Ruth Asawa School of the
Arts is the one place that brings them together.

But many will argue it's always been in the wrong location because it's
three miles from the heart of San Francisco's performing arts district.

For years advocates have wanted to bring the new and the more experienced performers closer together.
On Tuesday, the school board will once again reconsider moving the school to where, many say, it should belong.

"The resolution this evening is really for the Board of Education to
authorize me as a superintendent to go out and start bringing people
together to develop an action plan for how we are going to make this
happen," Superintendent Richard Carranza said.

The district has
some retrofit and bond monies set aside, but it's not nearly enough. In
2009, an architectural firm priced it at $171 million not including the
cost of renovating Nourse Auditorium, which would be part of the
project.

Now, well-known architect Mark Cavagnero has come up
with a new design for the school right across the street from the San
Francisco Jazz Center, which he also designed. Two of the buildings will
continue to be historic landmarks with some new interior designs.

"So the number is significantly higher than the 170 number. What they
are looking at now is over $200 million," Cavagnero said.

The principal says the new school would be accessible to all San Francisco public school students.
"The project isn't only about this school, it's about an art education
center for all of San Francisco students," Principal Brian Kohn said.

The superintendent says with an expanding economy the time might be right to give it another shot.
"Very open minded and I think very committed San Franciscans that are going to rally around this project," Carranza said.

Those who remain optimistic say it may take four to five years to get there.